Well, folks, Hollywood has once again stepped up to the plate
to deliver an uncannily timely dose of propaganda to the masses. On April
5, just five days after four American, uhmm, 'civilian contractors' were
dragged through the streets of Fallujah, the Los Angeles Times ran
an article by John Horn entitled "The Avengers." This is how the piece
began:

Ready or not (and many in the country seem to be ready),
several new films are about violent retribution.
It's payback time.
For each and every weekend this month, that's the mantra for a variety
of movie characters determined to bring justice to an unjust world. Americans
might feel toothless in their real lives, but violent film heroes in "Walking
Tall," "The Punisher," "Kill Bill Vol.2," "Man on Fire" and "The Alamo"
feel no such powerlessness. Rather than get mad, they get even, and after
just two hours of effort, they can truthfully proclaim, "Mission accomplished."

Yes, my good friends, it's time get out there and whup some ass!
It's time to teach those Iraqi barbarians a lesson that they won't soon forget.
And Hollywood, as always, has come through in the clutch to pump the masses
full of bloodlust and rally support for the carnage that is soon to be
unleashed.

How do they do that? How do they manage to always have the right product
ready at the right time? It's almost as if the studios knew long ago,
when these films went into production, that the events of the last week
would transpire at exactly this time. But that would be impossible, it
would seem. Unless, of course, what happened in Fallujah was itself a Hollywood
production.

Cast as the leading man was Stephen "Scott" Helvenston, who had bounced
around the fringes of Hollywood for years. As has been widely reported,
Helvenston, at age 17, became the youngest-ever Navy recruit to complete
SEAL training. He remained a SEAL for the next 12 years, and then settled
in Oceanside, California, just south of Camp Pendleton. He soon found work
as Demi Moore's trainer on the film "G.I. Jane," in which he also appeared
as a SEAL instructor. He also served as a consultant and stuntman on films
such as "Face/Off" and "Three Ninjas," and he produced a series of workout
videos through his company, Amphibian Athletics. More recently, "Survivor"
producer Mark Burnett, himself a former special forces operative, cast Helvenston,
whom he had known since 1993, as one of the stars of his cable reality series
"Combat Missions." Helvenston also made an appearance on Fox's ludicrous
(even by Fox's standards) reality show, "Man vs. Beast," and he had
small acting parts on such television series as "Renegade" and "Silk Stockings."

After all that, Helvenston's next starring role was on March 31, 2004, when
he inexplicably turned up in a burning vehicle on the streets of Fallujah,
Iraq, in the very neighborhood where at least 18 Iraqis had been slaughtered
by U.S. forces just five days before (though that fact is almost never mentioned
in press reports). As an Associated Press release noted, "after years
out of the service ... the former SEAL had left the comfort of his life in
California behind him and headed for Iraq."

He had apparently done so quite recently, with press reports holding
that he had been in Iraq for less than a month. Friends of the fallen commando
were quoted as saying that they were not surprised by Helvenston's sudden
return to the military life. According to Mark Burnett, "That's what, in
a time of need, true American warriors like Scott would do."

Burnett didn't explain why this particular point in time is such a "time
of need." After all, the Bush administration line for quite some time now
has been that the Iraq situation is under control. Where, one wonders, was
Helvenston a year ago, when U.S. mercenaries first rolled into Iraq? Better
yet, where was he when U.S. troops poured into Afghanistan, allegedly in
search of bin Laden? Surely if there were ever "a time of need" for a "true
American warrior," it was in the immediate wake of the September 11 attacks.
So it appears to me as though no one has really offered a reasonable explanation
for why Helvenston chose this particular time to make a surprise appearance
in what is quite likely the most dangerous city in the world for an American
to suddenly find himself.

Helvenston was allegedly part of a security detail accompanying a food
convoy, but witnesses have made no mention of any food convoy. The only
vehicles involved in the incident were the two SUVs carrying the four soldiers-of-fortune.
According to the Washington Post, the foursome "were in the dangerous
Sunni Triangle area operating under more hazardous conditions - unarmored
cars with no apparent backup - than the U.S. military or the CIA permit."
A Los Angeles Times report held that the "victims were in two sport
utility vehicles driving through the center of Fallouja's commercial district
about 9:30 a.m." The rocket-propelled grenade attack occurred, according
to the Times, while the vehicles were "stopped at an intersection"
in what was described as an "anti-American stronghold."

One might be tempted to conclude, based on such reports, that Helvenston
and his team were sent on a suicide mission, albeit not necessarily knowingly.
It is difficult to imagine, after all, that there is any reasonable explanation
for why four American mercenaries would be stopped at an intersection,
in broad daylight, in unarmored vehicles, in the center of a city that is
a hotbed of anti-American sentiment, in the very neighborhood where fresh
Iraqi blood was on the ground. The only thing missing, it would seem, were
the "Fuck Allah" signs on the sides of the vehicles.

As the Times reported, "U.S. military forces did not arrive on
the scene until several hours after Wednesday's attack." Some reports suggested
that that was because the area was considered too dangerous for U.S. forces
to enter. Say what?? The area is considered too dangerous for the U.S.
military to enter even with its dazzling array of weaponry and vast pool
of manpower, and yet four (relatively) lightly-armed mercenaries had been
dispatched to the very center of town?

The Washington Post reported that U.S. officials "suspect that
the men were not victims of a random ambush but were set up as targets, which
one defense official said suggested 'a higher degree of organization and
sophistication' among insurgents." But was it really the Iraqi insurgents
who set the men up as targets? Did the people of Fallujah lure the hired
guns into the center of the city, or were they deliberately sent there?

An article in Time magazine noted that "the reasons for their decision
to drive through such a hostile neighborhood remain murky ... Standard operating
procedure for security teams like Blackwater's, according to a former private
military-company operator with knowledge of Blackwater's operational tactics,
is never to stop the car in a potentially hostile area." And yet four highly-trained
mercenaries were indeed stopped at an intersection, virtually defenseless,
deep in hostile territory. That would seem to suggest that the team did
not know that they had been sent into a hostile area.*

Another article in the same issue of Time complained that, "Even
by Pentagon standards, military officials were fuzzy about the exact nature
of the Blackwater mission; several officers privately disputed the idea that
the team was escorting a food convoy." Chris Bertelli, a spokesman for Blackwater,
was quoted as saying, "We don't know what they were doing on the road at
that time."

If the team's putative employer, Blackwater USA, doesn't know what they
were doing there, and the team's actual employer, the Pentagon, doesn't know
what they were doing there, then who exactly does know? Clearly the foursome
didn't decide on their own to take a leisurely drive through downtown Fallujah.
Someone had to have given them orders to go there.

A report in the LA Times revealed that as one of the bodies was
dragged through the streets, a group of men, "most of them in Western-style
clothing, ran alongside and cheered, according to witnesses and officials."
Now that seems rather odd, doesn't it? You wouldn't think, after all, that
virulently anti-American Shiite and Sunni Muslims would favor Western-style
clothing. But I guess they do.

The Times report also quoted a witness as saying, "People were
saying that they [the four mercenaries] were CIA." Apparently that happens
quite frequently; according to Time, "Locals often mistake the guards
for special forces or CIA personnel." I can't imagine where the Iraqi people
would get a crazy notion like that.

Time also reported that just "before the vehicles arrived in
town, according to eyewitness accounts, a small group of men in masks detonated
a small explosive device, clearing the streets and prompting shopkeepers
to shutter their doors." Who were these masked men who cleared a path for
the commando team, and how did they know that there were special guests arriving
shortly?

Scott Helvenston's final role/mission was, of course, faithfully recorded
on film. And that film was, curiously enough, given massive media exposure,
over the feigned objections of the Bush regime and in clear violation of
the unspoken ban on showing the American people anything that could possibly
be mistaken for an American casualty of war.

All four of the mercenaries had only recently been hired by Blackwater
Security Consulting, one of many CIA fronts supplying soldiers-of-fortune
to provide 'security' in Iraq. Helvenston had reportedly been in Iraq, and
on Blackwater's payroll, for just two weeks. One of his accomplices, Michael
"The Ice Man" Teague - a former member of the 160th Special Operations Aviation
Regiment (aka the "Night Stalkers"), and a veteran of military operations
in Grenada, Panama and Afghanistan - had reportedly only worked for Blackwater
for two months. Another accomplice, Wesley Batalona, who served for 20+ years
as an Army Ranger, had also worked for Blackwater for just two months. According
to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, "Batalona was unsure whether he wanted
to go back to Iraq after a month off on the Big Island from security duty,
a relative said. Pearl Batalona, wife of his uncle Jacob, said Batalona did
not directly say why he felt that way after two months with Blackwater Security
Consulting in Iraq."

The fourth member of the team, Jerko "Jerry" Zovko, a former Army Ranger
with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, had just joined Blackwater
a month before the attack, according to his brother, Tom. Zovko left the
service in 2001 and found work with a "private security firm [where he]
worked in various capacities, sometimes as a bodyguard for celebrities such
as diet doctor Robert Atkins," according to the Baltimore Sun. Brother
Tom Zovko said that Jerry guarded "models and movie stars." Time magazine
had him working "as a bodyguard for executives in Dubai."

All four of the men, like thousands of others like them, operated in the
shadowy, secretive world of covert operations. Their own families cannot
say with any certainty what kind of 'work' the hired guns actually did. Often
the families did not even know what part of the world their loved one was
in at any given time. At the time of his death, Zovko's mother thought her
son was safe in Kuwait city, at the American Embassy.

The company that employed the mercenaries, Blackwater Security Consulting,
is purportedly a non-governmental entity, as are the dozens of other similar
operations in the United States. The overwhelming majority of Blackwater's
business, however, comes from government contracts. And the company has
such close ties to the Bush regime that it is Blackwater's men who provide
the personal security for Bush's number-one man in Iraq, Paul Bremer.

Blackwater - based in Moyock, North Carolina, just south of the world's
largest Naval base at Norfolk, Virginia - was formed in 1998 by former Navy
SEALS. The company boasts a reportedly state-of-the-art, sprawling training
center. According to Time, "the company has trained more than 50,000
military and law enforcement personnel" at its facilities. The LA Times
added that those who have trained there "include Special Operations units
from nearby Ft. Bragg, the U.S. Coast Guard, harbor security services and
the Federal Aviation Administration." In 2002, the company was awarded a $35.7
million contract to train 10,000 Navy personnel.

Blackwater boasts that its clients "include federal law enforcement agencies,
the Department of Defense, Department of State, and Department of Transportation,
local and state entities from around the country, multinational corporations
and friendly nations from all over the globe."

"Friendly" nations in this instance is not a reference to nations that
have, say, a sterling human rights record. Rather, it is a reference to
countries that are "friendly" to the interests of corporate America. Chile,
for example, is a "friendly" nation. According to the Guardian, Blackwater
has lately been in the business of training and employing former Chilean
commandos: "Last month [February 2004] Blackwater USA flew a first group
of 60 commandos, many of who had trained under the military government of
Augusto Pinochet, from Santiago to a 2,400-acre (970-hectare) training camp
in North Carolina."

According to company president Gary Jackson, Blackwater "scour[s] the ends
of the earth to find professionals - the Chilean commandos are very, very
professional and they fit within the Blackwater system." Apparently the
Blackwater system does not discriminate against rapists, torturers and assassins.

Elsewhere in the world, Blackwater has "a Defense Department contract 'to
train, equip, and permanently establish a Naval Special Operations Unit
in the Azerbaijan Armed Forces,'" according to an Associated Press
report. In nearby Iraq, the company employs some 400 'security' professionals.
And if all that isn't enough to keep the company busy, next month Blackwater's
compound will host the World SWAT Challenge, scheduled to air on ESPN.

Blackwater is only one of dozens of private paramilitary firms that have
sprung up in the last decade. As USA Today recounted, "After the
1991 Gulf War, the Pentagon, headed by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney,
paid a Halliburton subsidiary, Brown & Root Services, nearly $9 million
to study how private companies could provide support in combat zones." And
soon after that, as we all know, Cheney resurfaced as the CEO of Halliburton,
before later becoming the Vice-President-in-hiding of an administration that
seems to have no shortage of work for all the private military companies
that Halliburton helped to create.

These companies constitute a rapidly growing and largely unregulated industry
that "reaps $100 billion a year worldwide," according to the News Observer.
The elite 'security' personnel that work for these firms are paid salaries
of up to $25,000 per month. According to both the LA Times and USA
Today, some 15,000 of these security workers are currently at work in
Iraq, employed by some three dozen private firms. USA Today noted
that that makes the mercenaries "effectively the second-largest armed component
of the coalition." The troops of our closest ally, the UK, are outnumbered
roughly two-to-one by the soldiers-for-hire.

And who, you may be wondering, foots the bill for all those thousands of
well paid mercenaries? The American taxpayers, of course. As the Los Angeles
Times noted, "The vast majority of their work in Iraq is government-funded,
either through direct contracts with government agencies or indirectly as
security for firms that have contracts to help rebuild Iraq ... These days,
almost every Western organization working in Iraq has private security."

In other words, a huge percentage of those multi-billion dollar 'reconstruction'
contracts that Team Bush is handing out will go toward providing 'security'
for the companies being awarded the contracts. Of course, no one seems to
want to talk about why corporations conducting legitimate business enterprises
would need their very own paramilitary goon squads to conduct that business.

The private security business "is booming, security experts said, because
a surge in violence has come precisely as a flood of contractors is poised
to roll into the country now that $8 billion in U.S. contracts have been awarded."
So said the LA Times. And why do you suppose that is? As a general
rule of thumb, people do not usually shoot at those who are working to provide
for their well-being. They do, however, shoot at those who come to exploit
their resources and slaughter their families.

"It was the occupation of Iraq that brought explosive growth to the young
industry," according to the Sydney Morning Herald. In fact, it appears
that the planned occupation of Iraq (and of Afghanistan, and of Haiti, and
of ??) is one of the principal reasons that the 'industry' was created. The
purpose of the mercenaries in Iraq, according to the Washington Post,
is to "protect U.S. government employees, private firms, Iraqi facilities,
and oil pipelines." Joining Blackwater in pursuing these endeavors are such
firms as DynCorp - which provides personal security for Hamid Karzai, the
illegitimate head of Afghanistan, just as Blackwater provides personal security
for the illegitimate head of Iraq - and the Steele Foundation, which played
a key role in the coup that recently deposed Aristide in Haiti.

These private goon squads, noted the LA Times, operate in secrecy
and "outside the control of the U.S. military or any Iraqi authority ... Their
clients, activities and even the names of their employees are largely kept
from public view." The deaths of these secret warriors, needless to say,
are almost never reported.

It is impossible to say how many paid mercenaries have been killed in Iraq,
but it is safe to say that what happened to the Fallujah foursome was notable
only for the manner in which the corpses were treated. It was certainly not
the first time, and it won't be the last time, that 'civilian' contractors
are 'murdered' in Iraq.

The Virginian-Pilot reported that "About 30 contractors have been
killed in Iraq since fighting began a year ago." The LA Times held
that "dozens of the heavily armed security workers have been killed since
entering Iraq ... last April." A security expert was quoted as saying: "How
many private security guys have been killed here? A lot. At least 50, maybe
more; there's been six just this week."And CNN has reported
that Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root alone "has lost seven employees
in Iraq."

It is hard to see then how the deaths of the four commandos in Fallujah
would have been a particularly significant event had it not been turned into
one by the media, which certainly had the option of downplaying or even ignoring
the story, as has been done so frequently in the past.

Bill Powell wrote the following for Time magazine: "As horrific as
the killings were, what happened next would soon be televised around the
world, forcing the U.S. military commanders to plan retaliation." So it's
not that we want to retaliate, you see; it's that we are forced
to. What else are we to do? After all, we can't let people start thinking
that it is okay to kill our paid assassins, can we?

So retaliate we must. And retaliate we will, or so says Time: "According
to a senior administration official, [General John] Abizaid [head of U.S.
Central Command] called for 'a specific and overwhelming attack to restore
justice' ... The decision by commanders in the field to respond with such
force, he added, 'obviously pleased' Bush ... No one doubted that the military's
response would be massive ... In a reflection of the anger the attacks induced,
coalition officials said trying to earn the affection of local Iraqis was
no longer the objective -- at least not when it came to responding in Fallujah."

It is unclear exactly what the U.S. response will be, but there is sure
to be no shortage of blood on the streets of Fallujah. How many women's
and children's lives are the lives of four hired guns worth? We will soon
find out. As the LA Times' John Horn said, at the top of this
newsletter: "It's payback time."

References:

Dao, James “For God, Country and Wallet: America’s Privatized
Armies are Here to Stay,” Sydney Morning Herald, April 3, 2004

Duffy, Michael “When Private Armies Take to the Front Lines,”
Time, April 12, 2004

* Stan Goff, writing for From the Wilderness,
has claimed that he has received inside information indicating that the mercenary
team was supposed to have taken a bypass road around Fallujah, but someone
had set up a detour that led them directly into the ambush. It seems rather
unlikely, however, that the four men, with some 60 years of combined experience
in 'special operations,' would have blindly followed an unmanned detour unless
they had been specifically instructed to do so. [back]